That initial load time, holy smokes!

Loving the game, but man, firing up the game and loading into it takes forever! I timed the last 2 times I fired it up and loaded my last save til I got into the playable game at 3 mins 45 secs and 3 mins 27 secs. This is my launch phat PS3 w/ an upgraded 320GB HD, and it's nice that after that initial load, everything else is seamless for that gaming session, but wow. It's too bad ND didn't give an option to install the entire game to the HD and just use the disc in the drive for validation, it looks like the digital version loaded a ton faster (saw a guy on Youtube who loaded in 12 seconds off of SSD), feels a little like being punished for wanting to buy a physical copy.

Power of the cell

Well, yeah the PS3's speed on the blu-ray disc is only x1 compare that to the HDD and there is no comparison. Also exactly the reason some PS3 games require an installation.

I was just going to come in here and tell you how crazy you are for complaining about such a fast booting game. Until I remembered I bought the digital version. . . Don't mind me.

Also that sucks man, fingers crossed for a faster drive in the PS4 huh?

Ps3 blu-ray speed is shit. Uncharted 3 has one of the most annoyingly long load times whenever you boot it up with no installation option I'm aware of.

Have they said yet that there won't be mandatory installs on PS4? That would solve a lot of these problems.

Every load in GT5, even installed.

I've lost a week of my life sitting and staring at GT5 load screens. Also, has anyone else had a random in-game load while playing The Last Of Us? It's only happened to me once so far but it was really strange. It happened in the middle of a cut scene, too.

Drive in the PS4 is 6x, should have a huge difference. Also sounds like Sony is at least requiring the option to install games to the HD from disc, so that'll be awesome.

In the meantime, I'm slightly tempted to sell my disc copy for $40 or so and just pony up the difference for the digital copy. Probably just deal with it tho.

@toowalrus: apparently instead of 1x speed its 3x speed . both the ps4 and xbone are using this i think. i think it will be better to stream of the disc then cache some of the data one the hard disc thats what some ps3 games did.

The power of the PS3 folks :(

@solh0und: Don't think it has anything to do with the power of the PS3 as much as the limitations of BD tech 7 years ago when it was just getting out the door. The 6x BD drives in the PS4 and XBO will make a world of difference for load times, it just wasn't an option at PS3 launch obviously.

I still think the trade off was a worthwhile one.

It's only when the game loads from the main menu; it's not that big of a deal. I haven't had it take 3 minutes, though. Might be something with your PS3. Still, though, only from the main menu so that is tolerable to me. The rest of the time it loads seamlessly. The game has other problems that are much worse (technically speaking).

For some reason it only did that for the first half of the game for me.

After a few times it would take a few seconds to load.

I also have a 60gb launch PS3 and glad to know its not just me. The load times are pretty hefty and a lot of them are just blank black screens too

Too bad the game can't even run at a stable 25 FPS.

Yeah, they are pretty rough. But, though it might be my imagination, but I think they got better each time I started the game. Plus, there's no loading past that first load.

@mikeydangelo: Were you playing while it was still downloading the digital version? I had the same issue during a cut-scene near the gold dome but i was still downloading it.

Its going to be ok, I keep telling myself. Its only a game, I can wash the car, do laundry, go shopping. When i get back it will be loaded and ready to play. The first load was bad, but not as bad as getting to the elavator and stepping out into blackness. the game wouldnt load the final scenes, I havent been able to finish.

@laserguy: That is really awful as thats a pretty important moment of the game. I don't even know how to go about trying to solve that - I'm assuming you tried to get in touch with Naughty Dog tech support?

its a Naughty Dog thing - they have long loads at the start and then none when you are playing. Uncharted 2 and 3 did it and now TLoU does it. Its a design decision to have none after the initial load. I'll take a 3 min load at the start if it means none at all after that.

@humanity: I tweeted them but they gave no response to me. I dont know if its my system or the disk.

Just don't stop playing, simple enough.

I'd try looking into an e-mail address instead as those support lines are a little more responsive than Tweets.

Either way Godspeed and sorry the end of the game got completely ruined for you - it's literally like 5 more minutes left on the gameclock.

@humanity: tweets dont really work, I rented it. I would like to own it, but i am concerned about the issue.

same here, first few times I booted it up that happened and then never again, I suspect it's some technical wizardry they often elude to to try and squeeze the last drop of power out of the PS3.

takes 30 sec. for me

I don't mind a long load up front since once I was ingame there wasn't very much downtime even when switching locations.

I've had the same experience. Do you think they're hiding load times in cut scenes or something?

It really is something isn't it? Reminds me of Halo 1.

As a person who doesn't mind paying $60 for a game I want and who usually doesn't sell games when I'm finished, this is why I buy the digital version whenever possible.

It does take a while. I don't mind though if that means I don't have to load anywhere else while in game.

I think it does.

I have a new, Uncharted 3-bundled PS3 and I always have long load times with Naughty Dog games. It's annoying, but it just means I play out when I start the game so I'm not just staring at nothing the whole time. :)

It takes me about 6-7 minutes from the the XMB to being in-game. I almost wish it wouldn't tell me the percentage, that way I wouldn't see it fail four or five times. I get that that's pretty much the only loading the game does, but still, Jesus Christ, I should have gotten the digital version.

Yep, I bought the digital version as well. I was actually amazed at how fast the initial load is.

true, but i feel like after that start boot it runs pretty nice. Restarting checkpoints happens pretty quick and i feel that is more important.

Yeah initial load is awful, wish I downloaded it but I start that on PS4, hoping to go all downloads for games

This.

Uncharted Drakes Fortune also had the dynamic caching.

The first load is actually loading the majority of the most common assets (character models, weapons, interfaces) then it starts loading in the majority of the assets for the current part of the game that is being played... It continuously loads assets as needed and will load in assets as the player progresses through the levels or chapters... Layered through every level are trigger points that makes the game cache the assets that will be needed in a coming section or area... these triggers are often masked with a cut scene or slow walk or camera pan.

I'll take one big initial loadup then one in game that keeps me from experiencing the world continuously with interruption due to loading...

No, in fact installs will be commonplace on PS4. The thing is that Sony has mentioned that developers are required to support playing while installing on PS4. So you will have to wait a little bit at the start and then the game will start while it continues to install. Presumably, the game will install faster than you can play it (likely, given installs take no more than an hour and games usually last 8 or more) and you don't see any more load times.

And yes, the Blu-ray drive is faster in PS4 too.

As another note, after the 1.02 patch I had another super long boot time, did anyone else? It was so bad that a progress indicator (percentage) came up over the swirly spots and said it was 90% done. It then took several more minutes to get to 100%. But that was only once, it was back to normal after that.